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Thomas got his memories back first.
The team of doctors had been assembled and was supervised by Vince, Jorge, a doctor called Glen, and another doctor who spoke with a hauntingly familiar accent. Minho never bothered to learn the second doctor’s name. He never bothered to listen to her speak at all, always standing up and leaving whenever she uttered a single word.
Thomas would chase after him and tell him it wasn’t her fault that she sounded like Newt. Minho would shrug him off because it was that or cry.
After almost a year of work, the team was able to tentatively announce a successful breakthrough on dismantling the effects of WCKD’s brain chip. Reluctantly, Vince asked for a volunteer to begin human trials.
Thomas was the first to raise his hand.
Jorge held on to some reservations, muttering something about how it might be better to work on someone with less destructive memories. But Thomas slammed his hands on the table and shouted something along the lines of “I owe them this.” Minho ended up having to drag him out of the room, kicking and screaming.
He figured Thomas would be happy with him if he somehow convinced the doctors to let Thomas be their test subject, so he met with Jorge in private and told him how Thomas already had a few fuzzy memories after he got Stung and went through the Changing. His brain chip was probably close to being disabled anyway. Jorge was both understanding and apologetic, but in the end, it was clear Minho couldn’t persuade him.
The next best thing, or so he thought, would be to volunteer himself. So he did.
Jorge deflated, as if he had been hoping that Minho wouldn’t do so. When Vince learned about the offer, he was quick to agree.
Satisfied, Minho visited Thomas’ hospital room, where he was currently residing. Kicking and screaming while being dragged had opened up many of his sutures, and he was lying on a white bed, waiting for his wounds to be re-stitched.
Minho had thought Thomas would be satisfied too, but instead Thomas’ face did a strange spasm where he seemed to be deciding between forcing a smile and letting his boiling anger show through. He ended up slapping Minho across the cheek and yelled something about why, oh why, would Minho do that; didn’t he know Thomas owed it to the Gladers to sacrifice himself; didn’t Minho know he could die if the surgery went wrong; why was Minho such a stupid shuckfaced shank.
If anyone else talked to him like that, they would’ve been choking on their own blood before they could say a second word. But because it was Thomas, Minho just stood there, numb, and Gally eventually overheard Thomas’ screaming and came in to drag Minho away.
Something cold filled his chest as Gally hauled him out of the room. It stung in his eyes, spread to his cheek (which throbbed with a dull ache), traveled past the ball in his throat, down into his lungs, and tightened around his heart. And then it squeezed. And squeezed again.
It wasn’t the first time Minho felt utterly helpless – it wasn’t even the first time he had to be taken out of a hospital room while the one person he trusted to love him forever and to never hurt him yelled awful, horrible things at him and he had to fight back tears like the pathetic shank he tried to pretend he wasn’t – but the feeling never got easier to deal with either.
He stormed into Jorge’s tent that night, channeled his heartache into anger – which was something he had gotten rather good at – and yelled at him until he could taste blood welling up from his throat, and his vision was so blurred with tears he couldn’t see Jorge properly enough to glare at him, and he was hiccuping so much he couldn’t spit a single coherent word out. Jorge took him gently into his arms, and Minho accepted the hug and sobbed into Jorge’s shoulder, which he was rather disgusted at himself about.
The next day, it was announced that Thomas would be the first human test subject.
Minho gave Thomas a cocky smirk (one that said “See? Put some faith into me for once”), except it came out as a soft, hopeful smile (one that said “Are you happy with me? I did what you wanted, so please love me again”).
It didn’t matter, though, because Thomas didn’t even look at him.
After seeing the way Thomas had become resentful and desperate when he had been denied the position as “human lab rat,” Minho had thought receiving his memories would be like tonic. Instead, he watched the boy he’d come to know as confidence embodied, the hope of the Glade in flesh form, be reduced to a jumpy, nervous mess. One that could no longer look any Glader in the eye. One that slunk away from camp to run into the forest, returning with bruised knuckles, splinters, and puffy red eyes.
The ice around Minho’s heart didn’t melt. It squeezed harder.
Helpless. Absolutely, utterly helpless.
Yelling at Vince didn’t help to ease the pain in his chest. Yelling at the doctors that had performed on Thomas didn’t either. Minho passed by Jorge’s tent on his way over to the hospital, but he decided Jorge could get a pass from yelling, if only because he was worried Jorge would open his arms and wait for a hug, and Minho would collapse into them like some blubbering toddler.
Thomas visited him that night, after he had given each and every single doctor on the team a verbal beating. A few tears still lingered on Thomas’ face, which he tried to discreetly wipe away. He told Minho that the surgery had gone perfectly, everything as planned. It wasn’t the doctors’ fault. He was only acting so differently because his memories were… harsher than what he’d expected. He tried to give a reassuring laugh, but it turned into a sob.
Minho thought he should reach out and cradle Thomas, like how Newt held Minho in the Glade whenever he cried.
He didn't move a muscle.
Eventually, Thomas sobbed himself dry and left on his own accord. Minho watched him leave and felt like a coward.
He stopped visiting Thomas after that. They used to sleep together at times, especially if Minho woke up from a nightmare and became stupidly convinced that he was stuck in another simulation (in which case he would sprint across Paradise and cup Thomas’ face in his hands because he wanted the last thing he saw before he woke up at WCKD to be Thomas’ precious face), but Minho decided to stop bothering Thomas with his problems when it was so clear Thomas was struggling with his own.
The sight of him seemed to make Thomas feel worse – something like guilt swam in his eyes whenever they glanced at each other, and Thomas seemed to do everything in his power to make himself scarce whenever Minho came around. So Minho took the hint and avoided him.
Occasionally, because his heart couldn’t handle being cut off from Thomas, he would drop by his tent and mutter some lame excuse as to why he was there. He always made sure to bring along someone else, and he slipped away as soon as he could convince his body to do so.
It hurt. It hurt like nothing else before – except maybe for that time he convinced Alby to kick Newt off the Runners because a Runner with a limp was an easy target for Grievers, and when Newt found out, he threw a glass plate at his head and told him he didn’t want anything to do with him anymore – but Minho knew Thomas needed all the help he could get. Granted, abandoning him wasn’t the best form of help, but it was all Minho knew how to do.
He wasn’t Newt.
He wasn’t blunt. He wasn’t open. He wasn’t safe.
He wished he could be the person Thomas thought he was. He wished he could be the person Newt thought he was, too. They seemed to both have similar ideas of what kind of noble, powerful hero he was, but neither of them knew it was all an act.
The day Minho was supposed to get his memories fixed, Thomas cornered him in one of the library tents. He was practically hopping from foot to foot, eyes wide and teary with something Minho could only describe as fear.
He asked Minho if he was really, absolutely certain that he wanted to remember his life before the Glade. And before Minho could even respond, a clumsy stream of panicked words gushed from Thomas’ mouth – words that made no sense at all because why would Minho ever blame Thomas for those three miserable years in the Maze? And how could Minho ever stop loving Thomas?
But Thomas just tore at his own hair with frenzied eyes and a voice that bordered on hysteria. Minho tried to get a word out, but Thomas’ half-crazed scream of “I DID THIS TO YOU!” drowned him out.
It was, of course, Minho’s fault.
He’d never told Thomas how he felt. He’d never told Thomas how he loved him, how he would love him forever, how he would follow him to the end of the world. It was difficult to put those feelings into words, and it was even more difficult to say them.
How could he, when WCKD had taken everything Minho had ever loved and used it against him?
Hallucinations that danced in just outside his view; nightmares he still saw whenever he closed his eyes. The boy with blond hair who always stood so far away, who turned and walked away and disappeared every time Minho tried to chase him.
But Thomas kept sobbing about the crimes he did to the Gladers, and each tear he shed crushed Minho’s heart just a little bit more until he realized he couldn’t breathe. He tried to force the words out. I love you sat on his lips, but he didn’t have the breath to say it, and he was pretty sure his heart had stopped beating, too.
So instead of words, he kissed Thomas.
A long time had passed since the Glade, and the last person Minho could remember kissing was Newt, whose torn lips were hot with fever and trembled against his as the Flare slowly ate his mind away. And that same yawning, aching hunger that he always felt whenever he was around Newt tore itself free from the chains Minho had lashed around his heart and began to writhe in his gut. He wanted more. When Thomas finally broke the kiss and gasped for air, all Minho could think about was that he wanted so much more.
He raised his chin, a shudder going down his spine as he did so. It’d been so long since he'd willingly exposed his neck like this, and every survival instinct in his body was screaming at him to defend himself. He forced himself to hold chin there and waited for Thomas to take advantage of him.
Hurt pierced through him when Thomas ignored the gesture and went back to kissing his lips. Minho had to remind himself that Thomas hadn’t spent long in the Glade and hadn’t learned a lot of the quiet gestures that Minho did.
Then again, Newt hadn’t either, not for a very long time. Through the haze of deep, unwavering love that pulsed through him at the feeling of Thomas’ lips on his, Minho faintly wondered if maybe he just wasn’t a straightforward person to love.
Because “I’ll always love you” was never something Minho said, and certainly never something he planned on saying.
But judging by the way Thomas tearfully asked him if Minho would promise to kiss him like this after he got his memories back, maybe it was about time he did.